Bleed
by Gindokei
Summary: How on earth is Kagome supposed to explain her menstrual cycle to Inuyasha? My first attempt at an Inuyasha fic and humor. Rated T for the dog-boy's mouth.


_Bleed_

**AN: I don't know why I'm doing this. I seriously don't. But I couldn't get to sleep last night because I was thinking of this scenario… I'm sure it's been done before, but this is my first attempt to write humor, so let's see how it goes, eh?**

**In this, Kagome has been in the feudal era for about three months. I've played a little with the timeline so that she was in her own time when her cycle began for the first time since she entered the Sengoku Jidai. And the second time… well, just read and find out! (:**

**BY THE WAY. This is based on the manga, not the anime - so Kagome's eyes aren't brown, and I use terms like 'hanyou' and 'youkai'. Let me know if I didn't use a term properly, please!  
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**Disclaimer: I do not own Inuyasha, all characters are the property of Rumiko Takahashi.**

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**The first thing Kagome noticed was the wetness. It was uncomfortable – lying down, she could feel it between her legs. She made a strange sound – still half-asleep, she wondered if she'd accidentally set her bedroll down in a damp patch of grass. There wasn't any other explanation… was there?

The second thing she noticed was the pain. That woke her up quickly. It wasn't severe – her abdomen was cramping up. It wasn't severe, but it hurt, and it cleared the haze away from her mind. There was only one reason she would be feeling both of these sensations…

"Darn," she groaned, clawing her way out of the bedroll and flinging it aside. She'd wash it later. Catching sight of her yellow backpack, Kagome reached forward and yanked one of the straps, hauling it up as she got to her feet. She needed to be far away from her friends while she did this.

It was still dark. The fire had been extinguished not long ago – she could see some of the embers were still smouldering. It couldn't have been long since Miroku and Inuyasha had fallen asleep, then. Sango had gone to sleep before her – the demon slayer hadn't said much during their evening meal, and had fallen asleep soon after Kagome had cleaned up. The girl had gone to sleep some time after Sango, while Shippo stayed awake with Miroku and Inuyasha.

The moon was a thin crescent in the sky. Kagome cast a worried glance upwards, mentally noting not to let her friends chase after any of the Shikon shards for a few nights. The new moon would arrive soon…

The pain in her abdomen jerked her thoughts away from the phases of the moon, and she cast a backwards glance. Surely she was far enough from her friends now – she couldn't make out any shapes on the flat plain behind her. Kagome had stopped at the beginnings of a forest – tall, leafy deciduous trees stretched above her head. She dropped the backpack, exhaling loudly as she crouched down in the loamy soil, ignoring the wetness as she frantically rifled through her belongings.

She remembered bringing a few sanitary towels back with her when she'd visited her era last – that had been the previous month. But had she brought back a change of underclothes? Kagome paused for a minute, frowning as she tried to remember.

The wetness was growing more uncomfortable, and so, she gave up trying to recall what she'd packed and returned to searching the backpack.

"Aha!" The girl sighed in relief as she felt her fingers come in contact with soft fabric. She pulled out a new underwear, setting it carefully on top of the bag so that it did not get dirty. She'd left the sanitary towels in the front pocket of the bag – she checked and sure enough, they were there.

Thank goodness. Now no one needed to know about how she'd embarrassed herself.

As Kagome changed her underwear, she mentally scolded herself for not keeping track of her cycles. She'd always done it at home – noting down the date of the first bleeding and the last of every month on her calendar. Here, in the Sengoku Jidai, it was a little harder… but she'd managed it for the first two months.

The first time had been not long after she'd arrived through the well. Thankfully, she managed to make it back to her own time before the bleeding started, and she'd spent four days on the other side, until the flow had lessened.

Inuyasha had shouted at her, she remembered. They hadn't developed a friendship then – he'd still regarded her as a nuisance who looked eerily like the woman who had bound him to a tree, Kikyo.

Kagome forced her thoughts away from the dead miko, unwilling to dwell on Kikyo. The second time… she'd forgotten the second time, as well! But it hadn't been a heavy flow – and she had been too preoccupied with her new duty of locating Shikon shards to pay attention to the wetness. When she finally discovered her stained underwear, she had returned to her own era for a little while, to get the sanitary towels.

And now.

She dropped the stained garment on the ground, screwing up her face at the stickiness on her hands. It felt disgusting. Squinting in the darkness, Kagome wondered if she had any paper bags in her backpack. Unlikely… so what was she supposed to do with the underwear? She looked at it distastefully, biting down on her lower lip.

On one hand, it would be so much easier to just bury it here and forget about it. On the other, it was a waste, and she didn't have that many sets of undergarments with her. The group was far from the bone-eater's well – and Kagome wouldn't be able to borrow Kirara from Sango without telling the demon slayer what was going on.

Even though Sango was a fellow woman, Kagome felt uncomfortable discussing her menstrual cycle with anyone else, even her mother.

So going back to her own era was out of the question. Inuyasha would kill her if she asked to go back _now_, just when she'd sensed a Shikon fragment in the evening.

Kagome sighed and picked up the garment, wrinkling her nose. She'd have to wash it… along with her bedroll. Suppressing the urge to gag, she dropped the underwear again. She'd come back to get it on her way to the stream – she knew it was nearby, she'd heard it earlier.

Slipping her backpack onto her back, she turned and headed back towards the plains, pulling her shoulders forward as she walked.

Kagome returned to the campsite, glancing around to make sure that no one had awoken. Luckily, her skirt hadn't been badly stained – she would wash that as well. Already wearing a new skirt, she set the backpack next to Sango's bedroll, leaning down to pick up her sleeping bag.

"Where are you headed off to?"

She flinched, turning around to meet Inuyasha's suspicious golden eyes.

"N-nowhere…" Kagome grabbed the sleeping bag and rolled it up, tucking it under one arm. "Just… to the stream."

"Why?" Stupid, persistent hanyou, she fumed silently. Why did he have to have such good hearing? And… a good sense of smell, too…

Oh no. She was dead.

"Wait." Inuyasha's ears pricked, and he sniffed the air intently. Shippo had dozed off next to the hanyou, but the fox youkai was awake now. He rubbed at his eyes, blinking sleepily at Kagome.

"Go back to sleep, Shippo." The small youkai obliged, closing his eyes and curling up once more. Inuyasha, however, hadn't fallen asleep – in fact, he looked about as far from sleepy as possible. His ears were quivering, and he was gazing at Kagome angrily.

"You're bleeding! Why the hell didn't you tell us?" He sprang up from his place by the extinguished fire, reaching her in a few strides. "How did you get hurt, wench? Tell me!" he demanded.

Kagome narrowed her eyes and took one step backwards. "I'm not hurt," she spoke defensively. But as the words escaped her, another cramp racked her abdomen and she winced, clutching the area and pressing, as if to stifle the pain.

"What? What?" The hanyou looked agitated. "Speak up, you fool! What happened?" He spotted the bedroll under Kagome's arm, and his confusion only intensified when he noticed one of her skirts clenched in one hand.

"Nothing's happened! Now shut up before you wake up the others!" she hissed, moving away from the campsite. Inuyasha looked affronted – after all, was it such a bad thing to be worried over the stupid wench? – but he followed her a few feet away from the others.

"All right, now tell me what happened," he ordered, stopping as soon as the campsite was out of sight. Kagome exhaled loudly, shaking her head.

"I don't have time for this, I need to go to the stream. We'll talk in the morning, all right?"

"No, we'll talk _now_. Why the hell are you bleeding?" Inuyasha demanded.

"It's not that kind of a bleeding!" Kagome tried to explain, feeling a strange urge to laugh. Out of all the people who might have caught her in such a situation, why did it have to be Inuyasha?

"You're not making any sense," he growled, crossing his arms. Kagome groaned, shaking her head.

"It's… I'm not hurt, I promise. It's not like that." Her vagueness made them both frustrated, and Inuyasha sniffed again, even though the scent of Kagome's blood made him want to retch.

It didn't smell the same as when she was wounded, though. He couldn't explain it – but this blood didn't smell _alive_. It was dead blood. He frowned, feeling utterly confused – and the hanyou didn't like being confused.

"Okay, listen." Kagome decided to try and explain things to him. "You know how, once a month, you become a human?"

"Keh." This reminder of his weakest time made Inuyasha angry. "What're you bringing that up for? What does that have to do with anything?"

"Just listen!" Kagome scowled, and Inuyasha fought back the urge to yell at her. He didn't want her to use the beads of subjugation on him, after all.

"It's… it's kind of like that for me, too. As in, once a month, this… _thing_ happens." Kagome could feel her cheeks heat up. Inuyasha looked suspicious.

"… _what_ thing?"

"Just this thing, okay? It's not important! The point is, it happens to all girls, all right? We bleed once every month – usually for around five days, but it can be less or more." Kagome could feel herself becoming irritated with the hanyou's idiocy. Why on earth didn't people know about menstruation in this era? Why did she have to be stuck with a half-dog youkai who refused to believe what she was saying, by the look in his eyes?

"That's stupid," Inuyasha proclaimed. "It makes no sense."

"Nothing makes sense to you," she grumbled. Her sour mood from a few moments earlier had faded, and she suddenly had a brainstorm. "You could say," Kagome spoke, "that once a month, my youkai side comes out." There was an evil gleam in her eyes – it was true, in a sense. After all, even Inuyasha would soon learn to fear a menstruating girl.

The hanyou looked staggered. "What… you have a youkai side?" He blinked, staring at the girl as if waiting for her to sprout fur and fangs. Kagome groaned.

"Not like that. But I might be a little impatient with you for the next couple of days."

"Keh. You're always impatient," he grumbled. Kagome sighed slowly, pressing her lips together so that the word did not escape her mouth.

"And I'll be bleeding, too. But it's nothing to worry about, all right? You know I'd tell you if I was hurt." She cocked her head to one side, staring at the hanyou quizzically.

"… why didn't you notice this last month, anyway? Or what about Sango?"

Inuyasha sniffed. He refused to admit that he _had_, in fact, noticed a whiff of this dead-blood-smell the previous month. But they'd been preoccupied with fighting all sorts of youkai – he had just presumed that Kagome had had a healing wound. And now he learned that this was going to happen _every_ month?

"Sango? What about her?" he asked rudely.

"Stop being so dense," Kagome snapped. "This happens to her, too, I'm sure. It happens to all girls."

"Feh. You bleed every month? And I thought being a human for one night every month was bad." Inuyasha narrowed his eyes. "Never mind, I'd take bleeding for five days over being a human for one night," he decided.

"Shut up." Kagome looked peeved. "Can I go to the stream _now_? Since I guess you're done quizzing me?"

"What do you… oh." She'd stained the skirt and the bedroll. Inuyasha shrugged, letting one clawed hand rest on Tetsusaiga.

"Whatever. I'll come with you, you never know what might be out there."

Kagome didn't reply, but it gladdened her that he had volunteered to go with her. It was hard not to feel safe when Inuyasha was around.

"… so, this is going to happen _every_ month?" The hanyou looked annoyed as he broke the silence. "You're going to have to sneak away to wash your stuff every month? How careless can you be, getting blood all over yourself?"

Anger flared within Kagome, but she tried to keep it under wraps. "I usually keep better track of the days," she finally spoke coldly. Inuyasha looked a little startled at the change in her tone, but shrugged.

"Sure, sure. Just make sure you don't start in the middle of a battle, okay? Seeing the way you're wincing and stuff, you'll probably be even _more_ useless."

Kagome couldn't take it anymore. Gritting her teeth, she turned on Inuyasha, her blue-gray eyes spitting fire.

"Inuyasha, osuwari!"

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**AN: … okay, not sure about this. :/ I pity Kagome, of course, like every girl… but meh, I think it's too much conversation, which I'm not very good at. Anyway – let me know how you feel about it. Like it? Don't like it? Please tell me why, so I can improve! The color of her eyes appears blue-gray on the manga covers, so I went with that.  
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